Celebration in Order

April 30^th, my mom’s birthday. I think she would have been 81. Oh how I miss her. Hard to believe she has been gone for 15 years. One thing I do know is that she has been with me in spirit and I believe she has pulled a few strings with the man above. Thanks mom and Happy Birthday.

Since returning from our last trip to New York we have been busy. Last weekend we spent the time in Charlottesville to celebrate Jim's one year post transplant. Sara and Richard stayed at Skye’s apartment and Jim and I booked a hotel close by. One of the main reasons we celebrated there was to go back to Barboursville Vineyard. You see back in May 2015, Jim, Skye, Sandy and I did a wine tasting at Barboursville. We struck up a conversation with Dawn, one of our wine pourers. Dawn had an intuition that Jim was sick and although we gave her little information about him she said “you are going to be just fine”. She said those words with such confidence and know-how. After the tasting we had our picnic and a bottle of wine outside. When Jim returned to the tasting room to give back the glasses Dawn approached him with a bottle of wine in a wrapped bag. It was Barboursville’s most expensive bottle of red. She told Jim to save it until he has beat cancer and then open it for a celebration. Last weekend we opened that bottle and toasted to Jim. I called the vineyard a few days before and was able to track Dawn down. She now is the event coordinator. She met us and did the honors of opening the wine and even poured it in proper glasses. Before we left we had her sign the empty bottle AND she gave Jim another bottle to save for when he is 5 years out or if he overcomes a difficult hurdle in the future. What a special woman. She gave us hope before we had it ourselves. 

The weekend was also filled with going to a concert on the downtown mall Friday night and the Farmer’s Market Saturday morning where I tasted my first doughnut in about 5 years. There is a woman who makes gluten free and dairy free doughnuts. I should have bought more than one…YUM. 

We saw a parade in town called the Dogwood Parade and on Sunday before we returned home Skye brought us to a cool little restaurant for breakfast burritos and then to a nitro brew coffee house. It was wonderful spending time with both girls and Richard and Zach.